Freeze damage

 

Adventure Location: Falcon State Park, Texas

Adventure Date: 2-22-2021

Click the pic to enlarge.

Texas State Parks HQ is at it again. Now they have canceled the first stop on the trip to Grandkid Land at Choke Canyon SP. So we went to hunting another overnight spot and grabbed one of the two available at Goliad SP for Sunday night. I hope they honor this one.

Apparently the several days of hard freezing here damaged the native vegetation quite a bit. On a short walk this morning we saw massive evidence that a spring out break is set back noticeably.

As we came out of a trail at the butterfly garden, we noted that all of the special trees at the front of the garden that were well leafed out and starting to bloom when we left here about 9 days ago, are now full of dead leaves. We are hoping the trees survived the cold.

On around the corner this row of shrubs had pretty green leaves and hundreds of flower buds just about to burst forth. Now they look totally dead.

When we got off into the trails it was still showing great damage. The OFM tried to get a good picture of the damage on this Yucca bloom but it was too deep in the leaves. Most of the bud was turning yellow instead of white and part of it was black where it has already started to rot. There are many like this in the area.

As we went on along this trail we came to a picnic area. It was quickly apparent how much foliage was no longer on the brush. Before the cold this was too thick in foliage to see the picnic shelter and water faucet. Now you can see through the left over stems to all the picnic shelters.

We are certain the south Texas brush country will survive but we are wondering if we will have much in the way of blooms for spring. It was already running sweat hot here today. What screwy weather we have had.

This is make the OFM have to work harder at trying to have tooooo much fun.